The expressions service continuity, disaster recovery, risk management, and other IT business terms have become ingrained in efforts to provide the quality service to customers of a communication network provider. Yet the customers (e.g., those subscribing to Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) services of the communication network provider), sometimes suffer the turmoil of an extended cable failure, or other debilitating network issue where service protection simply does not exist.
From the customer premise to the local Verizon wire center, T1 signals are designed to a copper aerial cable utilizing High-Speed Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL). The copper span may terminate into a 3-1 Distributed Control System (DCS) and is cross connected through one or more wire centers. This drop cable will then terminate to its far end location which, depending on the DS1 use, will be a collocation handoff, another customer premise, a switch or other point of termination that would accept a 1.544 mbps T1 signal. T1 lines, however, may be subject to trouble due to a failure somewhere on the copper span. The failure may last for a long time.
There are no truly diverse routes that prevent the cable failure from preventing service disruption on T1 lines. The drop cable may run underground from a pedestal to a network interface device. The pedestal may be a cable tower and may be located outside of a cable provider communication office. The network interface device may be a jack for receiving T1 cable and may be positioned on the wall of the customer's premises. The network interface device receives the cable from the pedestal and in turn connects the cable to the customer premises equipment (CPE) via the customer premises wiring.
Installations of the T1 service may be subject to occasional external (non-network-related) failures. For example, persons unaware of the route of an underground drop cable who are digging up the property for some reason may inadvertently cut the buried cable. Repair of damaged drop cables is labor intensive and expensive. If the mobile communication network provider has limited repair or installation technicians available, there will be times when the demand for their labor will result in work backlogs. At such times, it may take a week or more to repair a damaged drop cable. As a result, most T1 subscribers, who have come to expect ever-present ubiquitous service, quickly may become irate if the communication network provider does not restore the interrupted communication services quickly.
Furthermore, certain subscribers have special needs requiring guaranteed uninterrupted service. With such a special guaranteed service, the communication network provider may have guaranteed to repair any line faults within a specified short period of time and to supply the customer with alternate service until the repair is completed. To this end, the company may have to dispatch repair people quickly and may have to arrange delivery of the alternate service/solution.
From the above discussion it becomes apparent that a need exists to provide an effective efficient back-up to normal T1 communication services.